Hacker News Reader

Comment by daptaq | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, what's better than trying to shift the blame from the actual people and groups doing this, to individuals, who often don't even know better? No need to address the companies or (dare I say) suggest regulations. It's the consumer who should think about this, he's the center of the market universe - besides 7 billion other centers - and only he - with the coincidental cooperation of all other 7 billion people - can change this. How? Why by consuming... ethically. Then the companies can still go on doing what they so, find market, created deals nobody knows of, destroy the environment and infiltrate governments with their "special interests". All the consumer has to do is spend more money on fancy stuff, and he doesn't have to feel guilty anymore. It's all ok! It might not be easy to ensure that all the people consume "correctly", but it's sure easier than trying to address the companies to produce "correctly". It's just basis economics.

View on HN

> Ah yes, what's better than trying to shift the blame from the actual people and groups doing this, to individuals, who often don't even know better?

This isn't a situation where you're blaming someone who buys an iPhone for all the pollution Apple creates in making them. Here, the actual person "doing" the pollution is you and me, when we buy a gas-powered car and drive it dozens of miles through suburban gridlock to get to work, or leave the thermostat at 68 on a hot summer day.

And while it might be reasonable to say that an iPhone consumer has no idea what toxic crap is involved in making that seemingly innocuous product, that's absolutely not reasonable when it comes to the products made by Exxon, etc. Everyone "knows better."

People generally don't buy Exxon's products because they're hydrocarbon aficionados— they buy them because they need to get to work and their kids need to get to school.

And they need cars and gasoline to do those things because American cities and suburbs are usually built around cars as opposed to walking, cycling, and mass transit. While that's not exclusively due to oil and car companies— desires to maintain segregation played a huge part too— they certainly played a huge part in ensuring American society was built in a way that ensured demand for their products.

Isolated anecdotes aside, oil companies had very little to do with how American cities are designed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Auto, tire and oil companies had an affect in some places.

The poster I was replying to didn't say these companies merely "had an affect in some places." He suggested that they were the dominant reason for and "played a huge part" in how American cities were designed. Then handful of examples you point to do not suggest that these companies even moved the needle in how cities were designed.

Oil companies had conducted research into global warming decades before the public had become aware of it. And they did nothing.

> the actual person "doing" the pollution is you and me, when we buy a gas-powered car and drive it dozens of miles through suburban gridlock to get to work, or leave the thermostat at 68 on a hot summer day

These examples demonstrate what lies in the power of the consumer and what doesn't pretty well though. Leaving the thermostat at 68 could be argued to be wasteful for the mere convenience of having it 'nice and cool'. However, I think it's in the hands of politicians to see that the energy powering the A/C unit, comes from more environmentally-friendly sources. Such a solution would certainly be a lot more reliable and sustainable than requiring every citizen to just live with the heat even though everybody knows the cool air of the A/C is just one button press away.

Similarly for your other example of driving through the suburban gridlock. I guess nobody wishes for traffic jams and long commutes through concrete deserts. However, people just use the existing infrastructure. What would be the alternative? Live closer to the city center, which probably results in much higher cost of living. Or not going to the city center every day, which would require having a (compared to most) very flexible job.

These are issues that need to be solved on a political level and not by simply expecting everyone to 'do the right thing' (in this case meaning, to behave more environmentally friendly), while at the same time knowing that this often comes with a financial or quality-of-life cost that most people are not willing to bear.

EDIT: typos

> Similarly for your other example of driving through the suburban gridlock. I guess nobody wishes for traffic jams and long commutes through concrete deserts. However, people just use the existing infrastructure.

People aren't just using the existing infrastructure. This is what they're choosing to build. In the late 1980s, Loudon County VA (the county next door to where I grew up) was mostly rural. Over the last 30 years I've watched it develop, and guess what? People developed it into a car-dependent sprawl, on purpose, and from scratch. People want their McMansion on an acre of lawn they never use, where they have to drive 15-20 minutes to the nearest grocery store. People want it so much, they get on municipal zoning boards and outlaw building anything else.

You're straw-manning here. A lot of rhetoric about pollution implicitly or explicitly paints a picture of evil corporations polluting for fun and profit, but any successful scheme to reduce pollution has to acknowledge that corporations are just one part (even if they are a very large part) of a broader human system. We can't move forward by simply pinning everything on corporations; that's a good strategy for making ourselves feel righteous but not a good strategy for effecting actual change.

I don't think it is a straw-man to point at a real problem and demand answers. A straw-man argument is creating something that doesn't exist then attacking that. He didn't call them evil, you are accusing him of doing that (You are closer to constructing a straw-man than he is).

These companies really do pollute, really are the largest American CO@ emitters and as Americans we have a right to answers and solutions.

> I don't think it is a straw-man to point at a real problem and demand answers. A straw-man argument is creating something that doesn't exist then attacking that.

"You are shifting the blame" is a straw man because the GP didn't do that. Rather, it pointed out a nuance in the issue that the previous comment didn't acknowledge.

(And a nit: a straw man attacks an argument that was not made, not a thing that doesn't exist.)

> He didn't call them evil, you are accusing him of doing that (You are closer to constructing a straw-man than he is).

Read my comment again. I said "a lot of rhetoric does X," which is vastly different from "you are doing X."

Throwing the responsibility onto individuals is DUMB because it decentralizes responsibility. Responsibility requires accountability in order to work. And as much as we'd all love to implement the anti-scale properties of "the long tail", the FACT of the matter is that efficient & effective management of the problem of pollution DEMANDS that it be centered and focused on the companies that produce it.

Throwing the responsibility onto individuals is DUMB because it decentralizes responsibility.

Good thing I'm not doing that, then.

Corporations pay lobbyists to weaken or remove laws that hold them to task for pollution. That is they chose to do it. (for many reasons)

Its not me or you thats changing law to pollute on behalf of corporations or companies. Its lawyers working for corporations.

So how is the commentator "Straw-manning"??

Phew, sounds like a lot of work! If only we could muster up some congregation of people that speak for many other people, so that they could speak on our behalf and tell these companies to cut the crap...

That sure sounds nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com